


Calibrated

by chainofclovers



Category: The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 18:06:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7811911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chainofclovers/pseuds/chainofclovers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"For months, Andy started her day by orienting herself to Miranda."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Calibrated

In their early days, unused to the other’s presence in bed, Miranda and Andy tended to wake up very close to the same time, and always before their 6 a.m. alarm. Motherhood had turned Miranda into a light sleeper, and although her daughters had slept down the hall in their own room for a decade, she still jolted awake by every sigh or stir or hum within earshot. Andy’s fickle sleep didn’t exactly have a biological cause, but she’d been Miranda’s assistant not that long ago, therefore she was a light sleeper too. In those tender early days, in the limbo between winter and spring, they accidentally woke each other up in the middle of the night on a regular basis, and they always began their days simultaneously, wrapped up in each other, overwhelmed by love or at least by some strange, nervous byproduct of love. 

The weeks went on and the seasons settled into themselves and Andy and Miranda got used to the way things were. They were not complacent or ungrateful or bored, but the startle and thrill of another person right there in the quiet of the bedroom softened. Eventually, Andy could sleep deeply again, could sleep through the night, and in the mornings Miranda always woke up first. 

For months, Andy started her day by orienting herself to Miranda. Sometimes she woke to Miranda sitting up in bed with the covers pulled to her waist, already working, dressed in a sweatshirt of Andy’s to guard against the chill, the Book or a notepad in her lap, a mug of coffee steaming on the nightstand. Or she woke to Miranda hurrying to the bathroom. Other times she woke to Miranda naked and aroused, whispering _wake up_ , whispering _can I touch you?_ , her hand already resting on the dip of Andy’s waist. She woke to Miranda naked and aroused and touching herself, both hands pressed against the swell of her belly or the soft skin on her inner thighs, then a hand moving between her legs, the other stroking her breasts, her face the opposite of guilt. She woke to Miranda depressed, every morning for weeks on end—woke to Miranda lying quiet and still with her eyes open, waiting for Andy to wake up—and on those days Andy rolled closer and held her until the alarm went off, willing her body to share some of its energy with Miranda, even though she knew brain chemistry was far more stubborn and complicated than that. She woke to Miranda stretching her muscles into cooperation, her mouth curled into a lazy grin, hair disheveled because she’d gotten fucked the night before, face lined with exhaustion because she woke early no matter how late she’d stayed up. 

Andy woke up, and Miranda was awake, and always there, and their days began. 

This morning, Andy was by herself in the big luxurious bed at Miranda’s house—or rather, their house, as she’d given up her apartment after a few months of sleeping in it exactly twice— not because Miranda had slipped downstairs for a cup of coffee but because she was in, of all places, Cincinnati. As the room came into focus, Andy rolled onto her back and extended her arms to either side, her left arm hanging off the bed and her right tunneling through cool linens. She thought about how tired she was, that half-asleep longing for more sleep, and then she thought about Miranda. They’d started dating just after Miranda finished traveling for the fashion weeks at the beginning of the year, and this July morning was one of the few she’d spent alone in the five months they’d been a couple. She’d hardly had to think about her decision to move in with Miranda three months in—she was that absorbed in their relationship, so full of the feeling of it that nothing seemed so real as being in Miranda’s space. 

And now Miranda was, in a sense, in hers. 

Cincinnati, Ohio—home of _Midwestern Life_ and _Campsite Monthly_ and _Wordweek_ , among several other smaller publications—had been owed a chance to host the annual Elias Clarke Editors Summit, and Andy had faced the wrath of both her mother and Miranda when she informed them that she wouldn’t be able to go along on the trip. She was swamped at work, and she’d just seen her parents when they visited the city in June, and besides, it would be good for her and Miranda to have a few days apart. Wouldn’t it? 

Now her arms were empty and loneliness gnawed at her. It felt something like fear and something like sweetness. On one hand, after the kids had (finally) gone to bed the night before, she’d ordered in the spiciest sesame noodles in a one-mile radius of the townhouse and had eaten the whole dish with relish. Miranda wasn’t a controlling asshole, at least not when it came to personal relationships; there was nothing stopping Andy from eating whatever food she wanted whenever she wanted it. But Miranda never would have chosen that restaurant or dish herself, and there was a pleasure in being alone and making the choice. On the other hand, Miranda was in _Cincinnati_ , which was still a home, and that knowledge made Andy doubly homesick. When they’d spoken on the phone the night before, Miranda had been just about to go to Andy’s parents’ house for a late dinner after the first day of meetings. “I’m already exhausted,” Miranda had said as their conversation wound down, and Andy wondered how much of the dullness in her voice was dread about the compulsory awkward parental visit with people who were not old enough to be her parents. “And I know you’re on a deadline. We’ll talk again in the morning.” 

The alarm sounded, and at the same time her phone buzzed from its perch on the nightstand: a text from Miranda, requesting that Andy grab her laptop so they could have a video call. Andy leapt to the next room for her laptop, and brought it back to bed with her. 

“I wasn’t allowed to stay at the hotel,” Miranda said by way of a greeting when the video chat connected. Her eyes were wide, and her voice hushed. The video image was grainy and lamplit. Miranda blurred and the camera zoomed out—Andy assumed she was shifting the way she held her laptop—and when it refocused, a very familiar Hanson poster came into view behind her. 

It dawned on Andy, quite instantly, why Miranda’s speaking voice was quiet even for her. She cackled. “Oh my god.” 

“I’m in a time capsule, Andrea. It’s stunning.” 

“Well, if I’d known last time I was home that you’d ever spend the night in my childhood bedroom, I would’ve made it grow up a little bit.”

“But you went home in January, didn’t you think we—” The sentence hung unfinished. “Never mind. I’m glad you didn’t. This place is priceless.” 

Miranda looked to her right and smiled. Just when Andy thought her mother was about to video chat for the first time, the bed shifted and Nigel entered the frame. “I wasn’t allowed to stay at the hotel either.” He mugged for the camera. “Hey, Six.” 

“Nige! It’s so good to see you. You got your own room, didn’t you?”

Nigel raised his eyebrows and kissed Miranda on the top of her head. “Oh yes, I stayed in the den. That sectional is more comfortable than the bed at the hotel. Seriously.” 

“It’s not fair,” Andy whined. “Nigel, you’re in the U.S. for the first time in months, and you end up in fucking Ohio? Everybody’s there but me.” Nigel had taken the helm of _Runway Italia_ in February, and the switch had gone a long way toward restoring his friendship with Miranda. 

“Yep. And we ate so much spaghetti last night,” Nigel said. 

“You live in Italy and my mother fed you spaghetti.”

“It was delicious,” he said. He smiled. “Okay, I’ll leave you two alone. Just wanted to say hey, darling.” 

“Bye, Nige. You’re coming to New York next time.” 

Nigel shut the bedroom door as he left the room, and Miranda angled her computer so Andy could look at the fold-out posters from teen magazines on the inside of the door. “I can’t get over how sexy”—she paused to read the name on the poster, and Andy could imagine her squinting as she adjusted her glasses—“Freddie Prinze, Jr. was. And here’s that dreamboat Ryan Phillippe.”

“I miss you,” Andy said, and this made Miranda turn the webcam on herself again. 

“I miss you too.”

“Dinner and all that was okay?”

Miranda nodded. “I’ll tell you all about it when I’m home.” She smiled the tight little smile that told Andy she was going to change the subject. This wasn’t a surprise; Miranda would surely rather talk about Andy’s parents when she was more than fifty feet away from them. “Keeping busy?”

“Yeah, but I’m free tonight. I might see if Lily and Doug would want to come by after the kids are in bed, if that’s okay?”

Miranda frowned. “Did you just ask me permission to have your friends over?”

“Well, no? Not exactly?”

“You live there. You’re an adult. You should have your friends over when the kids are awake, when they’re asleep, when I’m home, when you’re home alone...I don’t care.”

“I just didn’t want to presume—”

“Is this why you never bring people by?”

“No, I mean, I like spending time with you. But it would be nice to have company tonight.”

“Andrea, you can’t afford to get wrapped up in only one person. Not me.”

At those words, Andy felt a little chill, a feeling like the edge of panic. She swallowed the feeling, told herself to think about it later. 

They didn’t speak much longer. Andy couldn’t hear any commotion from Caroline and Cassidy’s room, which meant they were probably still asleep, which meant they were running late. Miranda needed to get ready for a long day, so they ended things with a promise that Andy would give Miranda’s love to the girls, that they’d talk again that night. But Andy thought about Miranda’s words all morning—thought about them on the subway, as she got her inbox under control at work, as she typed a message into the group text with her friends that, she was alarmed to see, had been inactive for six days. 

Miranda’s fervent “I love you” at the end of the conversation calmed her down. She knew in her heart that Miranda wasn’t about to break up with her, that her admonition hadn’t been about the end of their relationship but about the quality of Andy’s life. 

In simple words, Miranda had reminded her not to calibrate her life in accordance to one primary influence, one other person. But Miranda had spent decades being herself; she had no way of knowing how much Andy had to process. Andy had never dreamed she’d be with someone who had been alive as far back as 1959. Someone who had been pregnant, someone who was a mother—a mother to lovely, maddening, complicated children, children whom Andy loved very much. Someone who had been mean to her—not once or twice, in a fit of frustration, but on a calculated basis, for months, in what felt like another lifetime. She hadn’t been prepared to be with someone whose default position was antagonism, someone who hurt others that much, who hurt herself that much. Everybody wounded other people, this Andy knew. And Miranda was a principled person. Still, until it happened, Andy hadn’t known how it would feel to fall in love as an act of peeling back layers of pain, to find adoration deep inside something much harder.

When Andy had been with her boyfriend Nate, in what was her only other serious relationship, she’d relished the heartbeat of _ours, ours, ours_ that kept the time of every shared experience, joint purchase, common space. With Miranda it was so different. Although they lived together and couldn’t imagine anything else, there was, in some respects, a cautiousness—about collective pronouns, about their place in each other’s families. But she had clasped her body to Miranda’s and would not let go. They looked from two profoundly different angles at the same beautiful thing. 

Andy invited her friends over for that evening, and when her stories were filed and work was done they came by and ate dinner with Andy and the girls and laughed and talked and played games, and it felt like her life.

\--

A couple months back, she and Miranda had stayed up late talking on the roof over a bottle of vinho verde, and Andy had summoned her courage and told Miranda about something that had been bothering her. Or rather, something that hadn’t been bothering her, and how frightening it was to be given so much. After a nervous preamble, she got to the point: “Miranda, you’ve taught me a million things and being with you means I get to be around all that power and gorgeousness on a regular basis, and I get to have sex with someone who knows what she’s doing, and I’ve gotten to travel and spend time in beautiful places, and you’re so busy but you give me your time. I mean, how can I ever give you anything as valuable as what you give me? What have I added?” 

A shadow of annoyance moved across Miranda’s face, and for a second it looked like she was going to roll her eyes and scoff at the compliment. But she stopped in her tracks, set her drink down on the bistro table between them, tilted her head to the side. “You really don’t know?”

Andy laughed. “Well, without me you wouldn’t have such a well-groomed Pandora account.” She paused and smiled. “So many great stations. And maybe, though we can’t know for sure, you never would’ve been to a Chipotle.”

Miranda had been very focused during Andy’s little speech, and at this she’d howled with laughter. When she could speak again, she said, “You give me this.” She gestured at the air between them. “You make me laugh.” She sobered. “I don’t need you to take me places or give me opportunities. I can do that for myself, and it’s important to me that I do that for myself. But I need what you give me very badly.” 

Their talk turned less serious then, but as they sipped the last of their drinks and gazed down at the neighborhood, Miranda returned to the original topic. “I didn’t realize it as it was happening, but at some point in the last ten years I’ve made enough money that I can buy my way out of inconveniences. But I’ve learned recently—quite recently—that love is in those inconvenient places I’ve managed to avoid.”

Andy kept mental lists about a lot of things. The type of parent she would be (it would never happen, not exactly, although she would become an excellent stepmother). Places she wanted to travel (she’d do better than most). Her most desired bylines (she’d see her name in print in at least half of her favorite publications). Favorite meals cooked and favorite meals out in every place she’d lived (eventually, she’d have to outsource this mental list to a very detailed spreadsheet). And from the night of that conversation onward, she kept a list of the things that she in particular could be for Miranda (technically, anyone could do it, but she was the one who did). 

As Miranda spoke Andy vowed, silent and steadfast, that she would always keep Miranda in jokes and tacos and vegetables and sex and music, that Miranda would never be without an exercise buddy, or a challenging conversationalist, or a friend. That she’d never have get to the end of a long day and wonder if Andy would be happy to see her. That she would never—or hardly ever—return from out of town without Andy there to greet her at the airport. 

\--

It was in that spirit that Andy decided to text Roy, Miranda’s driver, to let him know that she would pick Miranda up from the airport on Friday evening. The flight from Cincinnati was due to arrive at eight o’clock, which gave Andy enough time to finish up her work before the weekend and eat a quick dinner with the kids before the three of them struck out for the subway.

At minute forty-five of their travel to JFK, it occurred to Andy that maybe Miranda would prefer a quiet ride home in her own vehicle. That Andy could have asked Roy to drive them, or could have driven the car herself. At minute forty-six, it occurred to her that Miranda might land and call Roy right away, having no idea that Andy had already given him the night off. 

She sent Miranda a text: _Don’t call Roy. We’re on our way to get you._  
And then: _Don’t worry, everything’s fine. Look for us INSIDE the airport._  
And then: _Welcome home!_

With any luck, she’d get good cell reception soon, and the messages would send in the right order, and would arrive soon after Miranda turned on her phone after the flight. 

At minute forty-eight, Andy remembered the strict taxi queuing policy at the airport. _Love is inconvenient_ , she assured herself, paraphrasing Miranda’s own words from months before. 

The arrival of Miranda’s flight was delayed by more than an hour, of course, and then the plane taxied for an interminable amount of time, enough time for the kids to convince Andy to buy them each a pretzel, and for Andy to teach them her favorite way to make people-watching into a storytelling game, and enough time for Andy to convince Miranda via text conversation that Roy deserved for his night off to stay a night off, and that she’d be so happy to see her kids that she wouldn’t even notice how annoying it was to wait on line for a taxi. Not for the first time, Andy wished there was a way for regular people to hire a car in real time. (Years later, she’d realize: _I invented Uber!_ ) 

When Miranda finally made it to Arrivals, she got a double hug from Caroline and Cassidy. Andy hung back, let them have their family moment. But after only a few seconds, Miranda looked at her with warmth in her eyes.“Come here,” she said, and they kissed briefly on the lips. “More later,” she murmured into Andy’s ear as soon as the kiss was done.

As they made their way through the airport, Andy was reminded of the way she felt when they first started spending time with each other again, when they were barely dating, and all she could think about when they were out somewhere was that they were going to be together someday, that everything in her life was leading up to this. 

Although they didn’t get home until midnight, they headed to their room to celebrate their reunion as soon as the kids went to bed. “I smell like an airplane,” Miranda warned, but Andy peeled off her clothes anyway, pressed her nose into the crook of Miranda’s neck. 

“Nope,” she said, breathing in. “You smell like you.” 

“You’re going to have to do all the work.” Miranda flopped against the pillows. 

But they quickly figured out that Miranda was already wet (“Not surprising: I’ve thought of nothing else since CVG”), and Andy was hungry for her, and Miranda’s statement didn’t turn out to be entirely true. 

In the morning Andy woke up sore and happy. The room was still, and she turned immediately to Miranda’s side of the bed. Miranda was asleep, curled up on her side with her back facing Andy. Andy placed a hand on her back, and while this made her stir and pull the sheet closer, it did not wake her up. 

Andy’s brain stuttered with possibilities. She could sneak out of bed and make coffee. She could read, or touch herself, or try to get some more rest. She had the day. She sat up. She decided. But first, she watched Miranda sleep.


End file.
